I’m really, really good at working with people like me.  I’m also good at finding them.  Is that enough? I used to think so.  But now, as I’m a little older, I see there are a bunch of people younger than me in the workforce.  If we are meant to work for 40 years -between 25-65 (and I think it should be 25-75), this means that 1/3 of the people are younger than I am.  I have lived out 30% of my career.

Each year, there will be more people on the other side of the line.

And there are women, people in other cultures.  Loads of people that aren’t the “white dudes born in the nixon, ford and carter administrations.”   

How versatile am I? I don’t really know.  Is it critical I get better?  Don’t know that, either.

The world is lousy with sales trainers.  Sales consultants.  Gurus.  They are everywhere, ready to motivate me to overcome objections, to buy, to cold call, whatever.

Being able to “handle an objection” is certainly a skill.  But isn’t it a greater skill to be able to avoid those conversations to begin with?  

Being able to hustle and find people is nice, but isn’t it nicer when the great people pursue you?

The people that teach “selling” are fascinating because what they are teaching is safe for corporate types.  Follow the rules- be a bit more congenial. Hustle.  These are characteristics that have a limited return.

There are other skills to be had, and we look forward to talking about them all.

Pitching isn’t hard.

The hard part is picking the person to be pitched at the right time. Waiting long enough to strike.  Being indifferent to the outcome because you have something great.

The actual “closing” part of a sales thing isn’t difficult at all. It’s a normal, natural, easy outcome. You just close or you don’t.  You maximize your chances by doubling down on what you believe, not begging harder, not getting chippy.

Pitching isn’t hard, but what’s hard is having something pitch worthy.  That might take a career.  You can’t just be a salesman that need a job, right?  You have to be someone to pitch.

I don’t consider myself a strong salesperson anymore.

I used to. I used to be proud of my skill.  I used to think I was a closer among closers.  (Big whoop – closing doesn’t matter).

Maybe I’m in the top 5% (best case) but that’s not worth much.  Most of the people in an organization are not worth much. 

I had a skill nobody needs.  Winning the hustle, the grind.  The chase.  It’s an addiction.  Most salespeople have some skill, some flair, and some personality.  The people that gravitate towards a job that tolerates them: hey may be otherwise unemployable.

There is something special about almost every salesperson – from the telemarketing numbskull selling you magazines, to the corporate guy selling CDN bandwidth.  Salespeople have some spark of the devine.  The enhancement that fuels both artists and addicts.  The colorful characters are wonderful to behold. 

I was a colorful character, and I was at the top of my group.  Problem was, I was in a really, really shitty group.  Literally more DUIs than occupational licenses. And, you get to know these people so you don’t think they are so bad.  Then you get mired in your group, and you soothe your soul by saying “hey, I’m better than those losers.”

I can’t play basketball worth a damn .  But, if you group me with a bunch if 8 year olds, I guarantee you I’ll dominate like Wilt Chamberlain.

I was in the wrong group, comparing myself to the wrong caliber of people, the wrong set of ambitions. I thought I was great, but I was great when compared to a cohort of people that were failing at life.  

Almost everyone in the FIRE industry is not what we’d generally know as a top performer. The whole industry works, but its not leveraged, it’s high stress. It’s not a good life/job.  I’m not the best sales guy ever. I’m a level one. And I’m aware of that and I’m going to level up.

Time to help as many people in as many channels as I can. Time to ditch habits that don’t support me.  Time to win.

One of the things that irritates me is when someone that wasn’t ever going to buy from me gives me advice on how to run my business.

As if I blew a sale. As if I’m stupid.

More to the point – as if, had I said something a little bit different, or been a little more deferential I might have won the sale, and that I screwed up.

“Gee, if you’d have done it this way, I’d be your customer instead of your something.”

Please.

I know how I come across. I always have. I know that sending a strong signal of indifference or disdain will scare people away. This is on purpose. I’m reacting to something that I’m reading.

I know that putting a bunch of hoops to jump through allows us to screen our customers. Some customers get them, some don’t. This isn’t fair at all. This is my business. (These days about everyone pays the same price).

When someone sends me a signal that they are insane, or insist on meetings….I make them jump through fairly arbitrary hoops, or I pick a fight with their legal department.

Obviously, we need business, but we really don’t need business from anyone in particular. When a client believes that they are our boss, they act poorly.

They get a worse project because our objective necessarily shifts from “doing the very best that has ever been done” to “being done with these jerks as quickly as possible so that we can do the best work on another project.”

I guess it’s OK to have false positives. To have a filter that kicks out more crazy/problems. And, as we become more skilled at our process, we’ll be able to “client proof” ourselves, and as our brand becomes stronger, people will put up with more to work with us on our terms.

There is a place for tactics that everyone teaches.  They matter, a little.

But focusing on them is wrong.

The tactics:

• Objection Handling
• Cold Calling Opens
• Scripts
• DiSC typing.

All have a purpose. To some degree they help, and they can make a difference.  But it’s frosting.  You can probably put bakery frosting on garbage and make it look like a delicious birthday cake.  The frosting will look OK, but it’s covering up stuff.

Tactics are frosting.  They help.  But before we study tactics, we want to dig a little deeper. I spent ten years studying tactics.  I read books like “Question Based Selling,” or “Selling to Vito“.  Countless others  All are fine, adequate books.  All are helpful, and have things that you can use.

But none of them inspire passion, none of them teach you to tell the truth and to be fully grounded, human and real.  None of them teach leadership.  Respect.  Kindness.  Helpfulness.  Being good.  Being concerned about someone else’s well being.

That stuff makes you good.  That stuff means you get real, long term sales.

I sold mortgages for several years.  I sold at First Ohio Home Finance when I was flailing hard to beat back Adult Failure Spiral. Mostly losing.  A story for another day.

The story for today is an observation I made there.

I was the most productive member of an unproductive office.  I was making something around $80-90k a year or so (it was a bad year, I’m sorry).  Many months–even many quarters my buddy Jeremiah would print off absurd pie charts showing that my paltry production was 2/3 of what was being made in the office.  (As another aside- there probably more DUIs than employees in that office).  Instead of wondering how the hell people were eating, I crowed like a rooster, and medicated with $2 dollar beers during the afternoons.

I wasn’t a genius.  I was delusional.  You’ve been in sales, you’ve been there.

But one of the things that I noticed was that everyone was reliving every blow by blow in real time.

A variant of yesterdays lesson, this behavior was indulgent.  People would have a sales event.  A call with a client.  A possible referral.  A check in with an underwriter.

The next action would be to repeat the story throughout the office, and contribute to the hazy and delusional cognitive dissonance that was the Bush administration.

“Another referral from Brian, mmm- buddy, things are looking up.”

First they’d tell our broken down mortgage processor, then each other.  A routine event, one of 30 or 40 things that had to happen for a loan to close would be repeated to the office 5,6 times.  Something that took 3 minutes to complete would bloat into a 45 minute ordeal.

Each time it was repeated, it seems that the event became less likely to happen, but only the skill of the loan officer stood in the gap and made it work.

I imagine their wives heard the details it as well, hoping to find reassurance that their husband may actually get paid this month.

I know that they’d even tell the other loan officers at Happy Hour.

Jeremiah caught this happening and made an itinerant snarky remark about someone getting 5-6 phone calls a day and then doing 30 minutes worth of debriefing per call to fill the time.  I observed my own behavior, and yes, I did this.  Nobody cared.  Certainly not me.

The lesson here is shut up about the routine.  It doesn’t need to be said.  None of it. Do your job, shut up, and do it again.  You don’t need congratulations because some housewife in the burbs returned your call after you stayed with it 15 times.  It’s what it takes.  It’s hard for everyone.

I’ve sold a lot. I’ve failed a lot. I’ve won sales, and I’ve always hustled my way through life on “pure commission” gigs.  I’ve liked persuasion in a 1-to-1 sense.

I’m not going to dispense “Chris’s 9 rules of sales mastery” or “The Rules of Sales Club” or anything lame like that.  I just want to talk about what I know to be true, and how to create a career in sales that can leave you with some self respect.

My hope is that these ideas will survive in the future.  Our world will become way more cluttered and fragmented.

I started writing a post, but it got to 6,000 words, so I figured I’d cut it up.  My thinking is informed by psychology, testing, and other ideas.

So here’s the first idea that I know to be true.

Sales Idea #1: Kick The Approbation Habit – Only Count a Sale Once

One of the battles that salespeople have to constantly fight is self delusion.  We walk a fine line between being an inspirational figure and turning into Willy Loman.  There are invitations to delusion.  Realtors have to content with a culture where twenty agents might combine to sell 30 houses over the course of a year.  It doesn’t take much to shine.

People are approbation junkies.  They need to be loved, approved of.  So they brag about it.

It is easy to become unhinged by sales. I’ve been there.  In my real estate career I had 3 epic months that subsidized 4 whole years of mediocrity.  Yet, I remembered the epic months and carried myself as if every month was like that.  As if I was some expert on selling because I was the “LO of the year.”  Dostoyevsky  talked about this in The Gambler

You have to be intentional about only counting a sale once. If you don’t do this, you’ll become delusional. A lot of sales have “milestones” and all of the “milestones” are good news, but they aren’t much news.  They aren’t finished yet and they aren’t a sign or time to relax.

For example, a salesperson might:

• Get a lead [then brag about how good they are at getting leads]
• Get an appointment [then brag about how they did it]
• Get to write a proposal  [and brag about it]
• Get a contract [then brag about it]
• Get a check [then brag about it]
• get their boss to pay the commission…[then brag about it]

All of this means that each time you dissipate yourself a bit. You undermine your ability to do more work in the future, because you’re spending time bragging about minutia.

We all do some of this.  Every one of us.  If you can stop and if you ignore things, you become a better poker player. You focus on one goal, not mile stones, and you hit your one goal more often.  If you stop getting seduced by things that happen on the way it becomes more likely you get the real goal.

 

A few months ago – in December, I think, I was shopping payroll services for our company. I had tried the major ones, and was inclined to go with Quickbooks Online. Mostly because I did (and do) view payroll as a fungible good, and a necessary evil. I saw that they all handled filing and taxes. The all had a variety of pricing.

I had to deal with sales reps to answer questions.

First, they all wanted to meet. They couldn’t answer ordinary questions, and the websites buried the information. Since I was biased towards a ‘name brand’ provider, I stayed with it.

Second, the reps kept providing nonanswers to get the conversation going:

“Hi, How much for three people paid twice a month–broad strokes are fine–and how much can I automate.”

“Well, our service price ranges from $29 per pay period to $149 a month. We require you to take control of the process and that’s for your benefit…”

What does that even mean? Does that mean I can’t automate?

Getting a straight answer out of ADP or PayChex is pulling teeth. I managed after several calls- and several reps.

The ADP guy that my bank hooked me up with was the most profoundly bad sales person I ever had. Nothing was a straight answer, even when I became testy.

He called, tried to close for a meeting that I didn’t need. I was looking for a price quote, as I had had the gist of this. Apparently, I needed to prove to him I was serious about payroll before he’d give me answers. He had 11 years experience, so HE was an expert. (In a moment I am not proud of I pointed out the fact that he had been stuck at the same level job for 11 years).

I don’t understand how people are expected to shop for things. Not understand all the details?

Anyway, when he called to follow up I told him I was inclined to go with Quickbooks Online.

Not because Quickbooks is anything great- but I got fairly succinct and straight answers. I trusted the answers because they weren’t trying to spin/sell some version of what I wanted to hear. They wanted me to understand what they were offering. If it wasn’t a fit? Better a non customer than an angry chargeback. Might have just been the rep I got, Quickbooks might be a worse company.

I understood how it all worked. I understand how they would debit taxes, and handle filings. After trying – hard – to get information out of ADP I had no inkling of how that would be handled. I asked a question of the ADP guy and he had “11 years experience.”

…

On hearing the news, MR ADP basically called me stupid. After the sale, instead of saying “Well, I respect that and wish you well,” he started slamming Quickbooks. “Buddy,” I said, “I gotta hang up, I don’t have time for this, I wish you the best.”

I hung up.

He called back, “I’m just trying to protect you from a mistake, a lot of people have learned that quickbooks isn’t for them because THEY take your taxes out the day of payroll. WE let you pay it quarterly.”

“IF you’d learn the difference you’d make another choice.”

So, I was an idiot for not picking him.

:::

Consider this: About 75% of the time, I get a no when I pitch someone. I’m always fine with this. It’s part of the deal, it’s never personal at all.

What happens often, is that 4-6 months later, many folks come around. I try hard to share good things I encounter and send each of my contacts some communiqué that is personal and valuable once a quarter.

Once, someone was in production with a competitor, not happy with the way it was going, and switched to us.

Had I indulged my need to insult them, to call them a name in a roundabout way, they’re not my customers today.

I follow up – and try to add value even when people don’t like me. It’s not personal, it’s business.

People say to me – a lot – that I’m a great cold caller.

That somehow I’m gifted at cold calling. I might be. I don’t think so. I think I just do it. Others don’t. I just chase, hunt, help, pursue.

I do it because it’s in their best interests to go with me.

They say it with astonished respect, but they don’t know how I operate. I am not a human boiler room.

40% of my work is done before I call anyone. Finding the right person that fits the right profile is it.

I’m willing to do what others won’t. Because of that, I’ve learned to then do what others can’t. This is the engine that drives things.

I don’t do it as much as people think I did. The Mike Ferry days are over for me- that pressure cooker style is ineffectual and stupid. What’s not stupid is the discipline and hustle it teaches.

Best case scenario – 95% of the time nothing great happens.

What happens when I cold call/initiate contact is about like this (and this isn’t quite scientific):

• 30% of the time it goes nowhere. The contact is ignored, and noting really happens. Spitting into a trash can.
• 15% of the time, I humiliate myself and send a ridiculous, irrelevant email that helps to train my people from using me, and my services.
• 20% of the time I get a polite “no thanks,” or “not right now.”
• 15% of the time, the person I contact isn’t right for our service, and the discovery process reveals that. This makes for some funny conversations “but…you called me, you must be desperate.”
• 10% of the time we haggle and the deal doesn’t close. Sometimes we make lifelong friends here.
• 5% of the time the deal closes.
• 5% of the time we have a core lifelong customer/friend.

So…this means that 65% of the time there isn’t a great outcome. But…but…it only takes a little while. The 35% of the time, the fact that if I contact 200 people, I’m damn near guaranteed to make 10 friends…that’s what I’m focused on. I can’t help everyone, I can’t work with everyone. Trying is stuid

After this, everyone goes into my CRM. This is everyone I connect with. There are several activity templates set up:

• Inbound/hot (for people that want us)
• Interested (for people that may go to the next one)
• Regular (this means that we connect about once a quarter)

Right now, it’s Batchbook, but when you fish around on this site, you’ll see a lot of stuff about a lot of CRMS. (I still maintain that in 2000, individual CRM peaked with Act 2000).

They have a variety of follow up sequences, and I’m testing if being brash/insulting works better than being pleading/begging. It seems that that’s the case, at least for me. I’ve sold a dozen or more videos by insulting their existing video. “I hope that your product has more care than whoever made that awful video.”

This isn’t the “nicest” way to do things, but it gains respect and demonstrates indifference. People that become our clients on this basis are also under control. When we approach someone with swagger, we inform them how their video will look. When they approach us, it changes the playing field just a little bit and oddly enough, it seems that we have less leverage.

Think about it this way: if you’re dating someone, do you want to pick, or do you want them to pick you? Then, what do you do to control the conversation?

There’s a continuum, but it seems that you get quicker dispensations with brash, and the percentages are about the same. Quicker is better because at least we know about it rapidly and don’t live in delusionland. (If we’re not ever really getting the business, it’s better knowing it.) Long term follow up works but not necessarily with any individual customer. I couldn’t predict that customer X would come back because I emailed a link. I also didn’t do it just to get their business, I did it because I add value.

Brash/unhinged seems to be a way to go. It keeps you from nurturing/chasing the business you weren’t getting anyway. With the CRM, every activity is just one more thing to do, nothing loaded or hard about it.

Ultimately, we have better luck with people I contact than with the folks that come over the transom on our /quote page. There are a lot of people that show up that aren’t yet our “right people” if you would. When I call people, I can create the information flow, and present to them in an intelligent way.

There is a long way to go to improve how we do things, you know? We are far from perfect right now, so we need to improve lots of little things about the way that our business works.

Mark Suster writes a great article on negotiations.

He haggles for a living, and there’s no doubt he’s better than I am. I represent myself at the level of conscious incompetence.

One of the things that he doesn’t (yet)  get into, not really, is the iterated game. You fight this battle to make the next one go more smoothly. He says:

In face, your goal in a negotiation is not always to get the lowest possible terms. Your goal is to understand the needs of your partner and create win/win outcomes where both sides are incentivized to continue to want to work hard together – now and into the future.

Here’s the deal. A lot of times people I negotiate with have a reflex aggression that doesn’t help them.  They’ll fight for terms that they don’t need and conditions that actually disincentivize deals from getting done.

This is not a surprise. We have to get things done despite man made obstacles.

I negotiate with legal departments all the time. They get involved in profoundly dumb ways.  Simplifilm pursues course towards big and small companies.  We’ve pursued multivideo deals worth, often, tens of thousands of dollars, and hundreds of man hours of work.

We’ll often come to terms with the person needing the work, and legal will push back on some type of material point.  It has occasionally absurd.  Everything from net 60 pay days (which would hurt us majorly), to who gets to choose the voice talent (seriously, legal has said that they get to pick from a minimum of 40 choices).

At a certain point, we push back.  Even when we can live with the points. Demonstrating indifference – in a respectful and cheerful way-  is how you create long term clients.

Now, it seems like an ego trip. FAR from it.  Having us be a peer and not a lackey means that the tension that comes from the back and forth yields a superior product. That’s what the client wants.

Being willing to walk means:

• We get respect.
• The client gets better work.
• We don’t go through mutual agony or client-side tantrums.
• The client rehires us
• We’re peers, not serfs.

Having respect is only possible when you negotiate with vigor and good cheer.

When a client gets the idea(delusion) that we’re financially in need of this deal…holy hell, will the number of revisions double or triple.  When the client feels like they are lucky we made time for them, they respect our ideas for the video, and it closes smoothly. For them, and for us.

“What do you think about this idea” is a more respectfil starting point than “we need you to do this for us.”

I was willing to kill what was the second biggest deal we had done over a minor point. Client wanted X’d out “mutual approval” on script and said “All scripts to be provided by client with no revisions by Simplifilm.”  This was tens of thousands. It came at a time where we felt that losing this would set our momentum back.  You can’t make a great video with a bad script.  We needed to have mutual approval.

We were willing to walk, and in a way that can’t be faked. I sent a letter – and I’m paraphrasing:

Dear _______.

Thanks for getting this far.  I hope to be able to work with you on these videos, but we won’t be able to go forward if we can’t have input and approval on the script.  I would like to know in the next 2 days if this will happen or not.  If that’s a sticking point for you, it is for us too, for reasons you can understand.

Mutual approval means that we’re both happy with the script.  It could be that your script is fine as is, or it could be that you’re walking into a minefield.

Let me know, and if this particular gig isn’t a fit, we’ll be happy to consider whatever you needs the future.”

…

We got the deal, and everything went swimmingly. They referred us more in the future.

That was for everyone’s benefit.